^ 1912 J Notes and News. 433 



700 species, if I remember rightly. The American Ornithologists' Union 

 has had a committee working on them for over thirty years, and every 

 supplement to the original Check-List has an increasingly large number of 

 changes of names, owing to the application of this law." 



Let us see how far Mr. Brimley's exposition of the A. O. U. Check-List 

 as a horrible example is correct. In the first place the Committee as 

 already explained, has only passed judgment on proposed changes, and 

 has met for this purpose for a few days about every other year; so that 

 the statement regarding the Committee's thirty years of action is rather 

 misleading. 



As to the changes in the Check-List. There were in the original edition. 

 948 named species and subspecies of which 550 remain unchanged in the 

 last edition, while 374 have had either the generic, specific or subspecific 

 name altered, or have undergone a change in rank from species to subspecies 

 or vice-versa, and 24 have been dropped. In some cases one change affects 

 several names, as for instance the substitution of Hylocichla for Turdus by 

 which the names of ten thrushes are altered, but all these are counted in 

 the above total. 



Now of these 374 changes 54 are due to a wrong identification, or to the 

 fact that the name foi'merly in use proved to be a 'nomen nudum.' As 

 an illustration of the first class; Forster in 1772, described the Great Gray 

 Owl as Slrix nebulosa. Someone, unfamiliar with this bird, supposed that 

 he referred to the Barred Owl, so nehtdosa was consequently applied to the 

 latter for over one hundred years, and has only recently been transferred 

 to the species for which Forster intended it Such changes seem inevitable 

 and have nothing to do with the law of priority. Again, 181 changes are 

 due to the subdivision of genera and species, or to mere changes of rank. 

 Picus for the small woodpeckers had become Dryobaies, not by the law of 

 priority but by the subdivision of the genus Picus, the latter name being 

 restricted to an Old World group. 



As a matter of fact only 99 cases — 70 actual changes — are due to the 

 law of priority, so that it becomes very evident that the chief cause of 

 instability in nomenclature is not 'antiquarian research,' but the extremely 

 modern manufacture of genera and species by splitting up old material — 

 one of the necessary accompaniments of systematic study. Mr. Brimley 

 is therefore mistaken in charging up all the changes in the Check-List to 

 the law of priority, as he is misleading in his statement as to the province 

 of the Committee and the time of its labors. 



Those who advocate 'nomina conservanda' will find that their panacea 

 will not cure all the ills of nomenclature. 



If they will only be content to let the International Commission proceed 

 with its admirable work for uniformity in nomenclature and help to en- 

 force the rules of the International Code in every case, we shall soon have 

 stability so far as the law of priority is concerned. ' Nomina conservanda' 

 and any other devices for special legislation only delay the attainment of 

 this end. The amusing thing about the whole matter is that while any 



